GRcade Musician's Club - Do You "Do" Music?

Bought a cheap headstock tuner there and the thing doesn't actually give a pitch perfect reading. It's making me tune my instruments slightly flat, this is the first time I've ever experienced this

Squinty wrote:Bought a cheap headstock tuner there and the thing doesn't actually give a pitch perfect reading. It's making me tune my instruments slightly flat, this is the first time I've ever experienced this

It’s got one job..... etc.

The semi-modular analogue monosynth I picked up yesterday (first new instrument in over 10 years) is strawberry floating brutal I did a stream not really having any idea what I'm doing yet but ended up with kind of gameboy-ey doomy sounds, I then overloaded my pre-map probably so it clipped like hell, result is weapons grade.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/718511467?t=0h18m5s

WARNING TURN DOWN YOUR SPEAKERS/HEADPHONES, I'M SERIOUS

Squinty wrote:Bought a cheap headstock tuner there and the thing doesn't actually give a pitch perfect reading. It's making me tune my instruments slightly flat, this is the first time I've ever experienced this

Plot twist- you've been playing a semi tone sharp the entire time.

Just ordered a bass guitar

Victor Mildew wrote:

Squinty wrote:Bought a cheap headstock tuner there and the thing doesn't actually give a pitch perfect reading. It's making me tune my instruments slightly flat, this is the first time I've ever experienced this

Plot twist- you've been playing a semi tone sharp the entire time.

Just ordered a bass guitar

Pics when you get it

It's on back order and won't be here until mid December

Victor Mildew wrote:It's on back order and won't be here until mid December

Holy gooseberry fool. Is that GAK?

I was learning a Metalllica solo the other day and I just realised how much Kirk Hammett overbends. I've never noticed this before.

Squinty wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:It's on back order and won't be here until mid December

Holy gooseberry fool. Is that GAK?

It is. They've got low stock of a lot of things at the moment, as a few other things i've had my eye on are out. I'm assuming that's a combination of supply issues thanks to covid, along with not wanting to tie up too much cash in warehouse stock.

Victor Mildew wrote:

Squinty wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:It's on back order and won't be here until mid December

Holy gooseberry fool. Is that GAK?

It is. They've got low stock of a lot of things at the moment, as a few other things i've had my eye on are out. I'm assuming that's a combination of supply issues thanks to covid, along with not wanting to tie up too much cash in warehouse stock.

They got fined at the start of the year as well. But I would imagine the fine is like a drop in the ocean for them. With any luck, it should be there before December.

Hmm I didn't know that. It does appear to be out of stock everywhere but I'll check other places again later.

Trying to do some mixing for my beats now. God it's hard. Things sound so 'muddy'. If anyone has any feedback it'd be appreciated: https://soundcloud.com/troopah/medicated

Been trying to enjoy making music again. I got very caught up in trying to sound like other artists, looking to see what chords work with each other instead of just playing, worrying about sounding cheesy and all that. That track I just got creative and had most fun I've had with it in a long time.

blackoutHERO wrote:Trying to do some mixing for my beats now. God it's hard. Things sound so 'muddy'. If anyone has any feedback it'd be appreciated: https://soundcloud.com/troopah/medicated

Been trying to enjoy making music again. I got very caught up in trying to sound like other artists, looking to see what chords work with each other instead of just playing, worrying about sounding cheesy and all that. That track I just got creative and had most fun I've had with it in a long time.

I just had a listen and i really like it. If i didnt know it wasn't a 'professional' artist, I wouldn't have been able to tell.

I've just had a listen too, and I don't think it's as "muddy" sounding as you think. Listening on KRK Rokit 6 monitors that are usually a bit overly hot on the mid-bass and it sounded pretty clean overall!

How familiar are you with different approaches to EQ? Apologies if any of this is super obvious to you, but a few things that have helped me along the way with mixing stuff -

On the master bus, using the age-old "smile" EQ curve can do wonders - where you dip the mid-range a bit in order to bring out the low- and high-end without having to boost them to extreme levels. Exactly where to do it can change depending on the instrumentation but having a play around sweeping across from the low-mids to the high-mids can usually help you find the sweet spot.

Just adding a bit more top end to some of the melody instruments or drum samples can change things a lot. Whether it's by using EQ or something like an exciter, a bit more top end sparkle can transform a mix. I had a little look at the overall frequencies on your mix and it's not got loads of activity up there, but then Soundcloud's compression will likely have filtered some of that off. And the aesthetics of the track wouldn't really lend itself too much to being overly bright, to be fair.

Scooping out all frequencies that you definitely don't need is another good one with EQ but it is easy to over-do. So on your bass, that might be using a low pass to take out the higher frequencies so that they don't conflict with those in the other instruments. Same with the low-end of the melodic instruments. The idea there is to make each instrument slot into its own designated band. But I've definitely gone too far with this in the past so using your ears is the most important thing to do.

The only other thing I can think of is bringing the bass down a bit - sometimes, just bringing a particular instrument down can comparatively make everything else seem much more present with more room to breathe. I guess it's the same kind of idea as cutting EQ rather than boosting it, but just with the levels of the instruments instead. But this is always a toss-up between trying to sound "clean" and balancing the mix with the things you personally think are most important - if having that bassline be really strong is important to your vision of the track, leave it.

Sorry again if it seems like I'm picking it apart massively - I genuinely enjoyed it and don't really think it needs any of this but just things I've had battles with in the past!

Victor Mildew wrote:

blackoutHERO wrote:Trying to do some mixing for my beats now. God it's hard. Things sound so 'muddy'. If anyone has any feedback it'd be appreciated: https://soundcloud.com/troopah/medicated

Been trying to enjoy making music again. I got very caught up in trying to sound like other artists, looking to see what chords work with each other instead of just playing, worrying about sounding cheesy and all that. That track I just got creative and had most fun I've had with it in a long time.

I just had a listen and i really like it. If i didnt know it wasn't a 'professional' artist, I wouldn't have been able to tell.

No way man that's class. Thank you.

Heskimo wrote:I've just had a listen too, and I don't think it's as "muddy" sounding as you think. Listening on KRK Rokit 6 monitors that are usually a bit overly hot on the mid-bass and it sounded pretty clean overall!

How familiar are you with different approaches to EQ? Apologies if any of this is super obvious to you, but a few things that have helped me along the way with mixing stuff -

On the master bus, using the age-old "smile" EQ curve can do wonders - where you dip the mid-range a bit in order to bring out the low- and high-end without having to boost them to extreme levels. Exactly where to do it can change depending on the instrumentation but having a play around sweeping across from the low-mids to the high-mids can usually help you find the sweet spot.

Just adding a bit more top end to some of the melody instruments or drum samples can change things a lot. Whether it's by using EQ or something like an exciter, a bit more top end sparkle can transform a mix. I had a little look at the overall frequencies on your mix and it's not got loads of activity up there, but then Soundcloud's compression will likely have filtered some of that off. And the aesthetics of the track wouldn't really lend itself too much to being overly bright, to be fair.

Scooping out all frequencies that you definitely don't need is another good one with EQ but it is easy to over-do. So on your bass, that might be using a low pass to take out the higher frequencies so that they don't conflict with those in the other instruments. Same with the low-end of the melodic instruments. The idea there is to make each instrument slot into its own designated band. But I've definitely gone too far with this in the past so using your ears is the most important thing to do.

The only other thing I can think of is bringing the bass down a bit - sometimes, just bringing a particular instrument down can comparatively make everything else seem much more present with more room to breathe. I guess it's the same kind of idea as cutting EQ rather than boosting it, but just with the levels of the instruments instead. But this is always a toss-up between trying to sound "clean" and balancing the mix with the things you personally think are most important - if having that bassline be really strong is important to your vision of the track, leave it.

Sorry again if it seems like I'm picking it apart massively - I genuinely enjoyed it and don't really think it needs any of this but just things I've had battles with in the past!

Thank you very much for this. Don't worry none of it was obvious at all, I've very new and only really tried to gain stage it. Need to learn more about the frequencies and all that sort of thing. So I think what you're saying is that you want each 'stem' to have it's own space in the frequency range as best you can?

That's a really interesting thing about the smile EQ curve on the main bus. I had no idea that was a common thing, I've been EQing like that for a while now. It sounds better to me than the other ways you can do it.

It's nice when you come across stuff like this. Makes me feel like might be doing something right with mixing.

Also randomly discovered the -3db trick for dual panned harmony guitars without knowing it was a done thing. Just pays to use your ears I guess.

Victor Mildew wrote:

Squinty wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:It's on back order and won't be here until mid December

Holy gooseberry fool. Is that GAK?

It is. They've got low stock of a lot of things at the moment, as a few other things i've had my eye on are out. I'm assuming that's a combination of supply issues thanks to covid, along with not wanting to tie up too much cash in warehouse stock.

Yes I went in the other day and they had no pickups and no guitar cabs, all warehouse only.

Or they just wanted me to go away, which was kind of annoying as I wanted to pick up an MXR Phase 90, after speaking to them I got flustered and forgot. I went to the door having just been next door at the pro audio part to pick up my Microbrute, which was £381 so hardly like I was wasting anybody's time not buying anything (something they surely deal with very frequently).

The smile EQ curve won't help you if you're using bass heavy signals though. more often than not my EQ curve looks more like _--^^- because of bass guitars, bass synths or other electronic samples that are pretty hot there. Especially if you have a bass guitar or kick with a lot of small room reverb like a practice room.

If you don't have a sensible subwoofer (NOT one designed for making LFE signals as loud as possible i.e. games/cinema) throw on some headphones to try and get control over the low end, but then listen again on speakers. To be safe, I just roll off the bass below 40Hz a lot of the time, below 20Hz there's not much point for most people's systems. It's pretty much impossible to subjectively mix bass unless you have a treated studio space with bass traps, sub or stereo subs and a perfect pair of ears (plus neighbours to tolerate retriggering your wub wub sounds over and over again).

If you want to invest maybe look at a plugin called "Bassroom" that helps determine this algorithmically for different types of music and just takes a few clicks to setup. It's only £50 https://www.musictech.net/reviews/plug- ... -bassroom/

Another thing to remember when mixing bass is fatigue, you need to take regular breaks or your ears will start to attenuate the bass sounds, leading you to boost the bass when you don't need to because you can't hear it anymore. Then when you go back to the same mix a couple of days later all you can hear is mud.

I've read a couple of times about mix engineers going and playing their mix on a CD player inside their car or whatever just to hear things from a totally different environment. Try that or go jogging with it on in some headphones or whatever you do. Listen to a whole album of partly mastered material. You can't make objective decisions listening to material over and over again in the same setting.

Green Gecko wrote:The smile EQ curve won't help you if you're using bass heavy signals though. more often than not my EQ curve looks more like _--^^- because of bass guitars, bass synths or other electronic samples that are pretty hot there. Especially if you have a bass guitar or kick with a lot of small room reverb like a practice room.

True, if you've got a lot of bass, it'd probably only highlight that fact even more - I suppose it was more a general idea than something that should be applied for this exact track. I do find that it really tidies up the other instruments in a lot of mixes since your ears are typically very responsive to the mid-range compared to everything else but it'll always depend on the mix in question. The rest of your post is great advice too - it's surprising how easily you adapt to the room you're in and what not, so referencing on a few different systems in different environments is definitely a good idea too.

blackoutHERO wrote:Thank you very much for this. Don't worry none of it was obvious at all, I've very new and only really tried to gain stage it. Need to learn more about the frequencies and all that sort of thing. So I think what you're saying is that you want each 'stem' to have it's own space in the frequency range as best you can?

Yeah, pretty much. As I said, it's easy to accidentally over-do it so you have to make sure you're always letting your ears make the final decision, but it's surprising how much you can often "trim" off the frequency spectrum of a sound and end up with the same kind of result once everything is playing together.

I've noticed it a lot with listening to heavily processed electronic music and spotting which samples the producer has used from sample packs I've used before. For example, a clap sample they use might have quite a lot of low-end in it on the original sample, but in the mix, they'll have likely removed it as it was unnecessary. It'll obviously depend on context, but if it's landing on the same beat as a kick/bass drum sample a lot of the time, those frequencies are basically just fighting each other or stacking on top of each other and stopping things from being as clear as they could be. Or another example might be that rolling off the low end of a synth that's mostly playing when the bass is also playing will help tidy things up. A lot of the time, in isolation it might sound like you've taken some of the impact out of the sound, but then when you play it all in context, you realise the gaps are being filled by something else. If you find that this part needs to play solo at some point and then sounds a little "thin" because of the EQ, you could duplicate the track and have the "thin" one playing when the bass is playing and a version without the EQ cut playing for the solo/no bass part. Just some ideas anyway, it can be easy to get bogged down in over-thinking it all though so definitely give your ears the opportunity to make the final decisions. Sometimes a little mud can be forgiven if you really like a specific aspect of an instrument.

Green Gecko wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:

Squinty wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:It's on back order and won't be here until mid December

Holy gooseberry fool. Is that GAK?

It is. They've got low stock of a lot of things at the moment, as a few other things i've had my eye on are out. I'm assuming that's a combination of supply issues thanks to covid, along with not wanting to tie up too much cash in warehouse stock.

Yes I went in the other day and they had no pickups and no guitar cabs, all warehouse only.

Or they just wanted me to go away, which was kind of annoying as I wanted to pick up an MXR Phase 90, after speaking to them I got flustered and forgot. I went to the door having just been next door at the pro audio part to pick up my Microbrute, which was £381 so hardly like I was wasting anybody's time not buying anything (something they surely deal with very frequently).

Is that a Minibrute or Microbrute that you got? I thought the minibrute was a bit cheaper than that? Also, I WANT ONE.

Heskimo wrote:I've noticed it a lot with listening to heavily processed electronic music and spotting which samples the producer has used from sample packs I've used before. For example, a clap sample they use might have quite a lot of low-end in it on the original sample, but in the mix, they'll have likely removed it as it was unnecessary. It'll obviously depend on context, but if it's landing on the same beat as a kick/bass drum sample a lot of the time, those frequencies are basically just fighting each other or stacking on top of each other and stopping things from being as clear as they could be. Or another example might be that rolling off the low end of a synth that's mostly playing when the bass is also playing will help tidy things up. A lot of the time, in isolation it might sound like you've taken some of the impact out of the sound, but then when you play it all in context, you realise the gaps are being filled by something else. If you find that this part needs to play solo at some point and then sounds a little "thin" because of the EQ, you could duplicate the track and have the "thin" one playing when the bass is playing and a version without the EQ cut playing for the solo/no bass part. Just some ideas anyway, it can be easy to get bogged down in over-thinking it all though so definitely give your ears the opportunity to make the final decisions. Sometimes a little mud can be forgiven if you really like a specific aspect of an instrument.

Not sure if you'll be able to answer or not, but if you know Ableton at all, would it be using EQ Eight and moving the curve depending which I want to eliminate, or am I better using EQ Three and just turning off the H/M/L?